ESL Lottery in Framingham Opens Dreams for Many

Prospective ESL students wait eagerly to hear if their names will be announced, meaning that they won enrollment in free ESL courses at Fuller Middle School in Framingham, Mass. (photos: E. de Oliveira, EthnicNEWz.org)

The night was freezing, but hope was in the air. While President Obama attended one of 10 balls in his honor, Vanilde Firmino tried for the fifth time to get enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL) course at Framingham, Mass., a suburb of Boston.

On January 20, 2009, Firmino and some 600 immigrant adults were jammed into the auditorium of Fuller Middle School.  Everyone knew the school’s free ESL courses were an obligatory stop for immigrants eager to learn the language of their future -- but that not all of them would get enrolled. “If you don’t speak English, you’re missing out at work, at home. When you do, you’re more respected,” said Luciene Campos in Portuguese.  Campos is a Brazilian immigrant who was trying for the second time to get into one of Fuller's ESL courses.  Waiting patiently with her was a little girl, a friend's daughter, whom Campos was babysitting.“I am sorry we don’t have spots available for everybody. This lottery is the fairest way to distribute spots,” said Christine Tibur, speaking into a microphone. Tibur, the director of ESL, created the lottery when, in 2002, she saw prospective ESL students sleeping on the school’s sidewalks the night before enrollment day.Tibur, who was the program’s first teacher 25 years ago, knows exactly what it means to be foreign and not know the language of the land.“Fresh out of college, I got a teaching job in Venezuela. If I got to eat ham and cheese for a month, it was because I only knew how to say ‘presunto y queso,’” she said, referring to ham and cheese.Framingham has always been a destination for waves of immigrants. First were the Italians, Greeks, then the Hispanics.

As demand for ESL classes grew, Fuller created the following policy: Students must attend 80 percent of class sessions or lose their spot.A big chunk of the 185 lottery winners will have to attend prep class, an intermediate step before they can be placed in their levels definitely. That’s the case of Karen Massala, who says that learning English is more than a personal choice.“I was pulled over by a cop recently. I could not understand enough of what the cop said. I felt a little bit humiliated,” she said in Portuguese.For many immigrants, it would be easy to live in Framingham and not learn English. A radio station blasts Brazilian talk shows 24 hours per day, and eight local newspapers discuss in Portuguese the latest news about Latin America.“People were complaining that life is tough in America right now,” said Neuza Maria da Silva, 72, a volunteer who graduated at Fuller ESL classes five years ago.“I told them: ‘Why don’t you study English?’ Life gets better when you do,” she added.What’s really interesting about Silva’s trajectory is the way she measures her own success.

“I earn $22 per hour, which is more than what a construction worker makes,” she said.The ESL program collects many stories about successful local immigrants who viewed the English grammar as a short cut to climbing up the social ladder.Nineteen years ago, Fernando Castro had to make a decision: continue to work 70 hours per week in two jobs or study English.“Six months after the program I became a supervisor at a car wash. I no longer had to put my muscles to work, but my mind,” said Castro, who now owns five tax-return stores in Brazilian hotspots across Massachusetts.In its 25 years, the Fuller ESL program had ups and downs. In 1999, state legislators threatened to cut half of the program’s budget. Thanks to a tremendous community outcry, the program survived and today runs on an annual budget of $650,000 per year.If it’s still not clear whether or not immigrants really want to learn English, ESL director Tibur has a simple message:  "Come see our registration," she said.“The dream is always to have no waiting list. to be able to say to everyone, ‘Ok, sit tight we're going to get you a place tonight.’ That’s a lot of funding, but when I started 25 years ago I never thought it would get to this point. So, I guess it doesn’t hurt to dream big, right?” she added.

source:  EthnicNEWz.org

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ESL director and lottery creator Christine Tibur calls out the names of 185 lucky immigrants who will be able to take ESL courses for free. Some 600 persons entered the ESL lottery this year, but funding exists to take only 185 of them. (EthnicNEWz.org)